Data loss prevention (DLP) poses a serious issue for companies, as the number of incidents and the cost to those experiencing them continues to increase. Whether caused by malicious intent, or an inadvertent mistake, data loss can diminish a company's brand, reduce shareholder value, and damage the company's goodwill and reputation.

In many businesses, e-mail, instant messaging, website forms, file transfers, and other outgoing electronic communications are largely uncontrolled and unmonitored on their way to their destinations. This creates the risk of confidential information falling into the wrong hands. Should sensitive information be exposed, it can seriously hurt an organization's bottom line through fines, bad publicity, loss of strategic customers, loss of competitive intelligence, and legal action. All avenues of electronic communication need to be policed to prevent intellectual property, financial information, patient information, personal credit card data, and a variety of sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.

Across all critical protocols, a high-performance, intelligent data loss prevention solution is a must-have for today's organizations. Decision makers should look to vendors with deep expertise in content scanning and select a best-of-breed DLP solution.